Art Levitt, Vice President

Art Levitt, a former media and entertainment executive, recently moved to Santa Barbara to pursue his passion for the environment. After receiving a certificate of environmental studies from UCLA Extension, Art has dedicated his time to working with causes that protect and restore critical habitats. An avid underwater photographer, Levitt has had the privilege of exploring and photographing the underwater world of the Channel Islands for over 20 years.

“Being involved with Channel Islands Restoration allows me to support a uniquely talented team with a history of success restoring important habitats in places that I love.” Levitt has been involved in the philanthropy and conservation world, serving as Chief of Staff of the Dalio Foundation. His responsibilities included managing initiatives in Marine Conservation and Global Oceanographic work.

Art’s career in entertainment included positions as CEO of Hard Rock Café International, founding CEO of the movie ticketing company, Fandango, and president of Disney Regional Entertainment. He currently serves on the boards of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach and Reef Check Foundation. Levitt completed the Program for Management Development (P.M.D.) at Harvard University and graduated from Southampton College with a B.A. in Biology, focusing on Marine Science. Levitt has served on the Walden Woods & Elton John AIDS Foundations boards and resides in Santa Barbara.

Chris Allen, Treasurer

Chris Allen, a Ventura County native, combines his love for the outdoors with a career in transportation. With over 16 years of experience spanning operations management, engineering, and finance, Chris's professional journey is underpinned by an accounting degree from California State University, Northridge.

 An avid endurance athlete, he has qualified for and completed two Ironman World Championships along with pacing multiple local marathons.

As a father of two young children, Chris's motivation for conservation work is deeply personal. Driven by a desire to preserve the natural resources and outdoor spaces that have played such a significant role in his own life. His goal is to ensure that future generations, including his own children, can experience the same joy and wonder in nature that he has enjoyed for decades.

A long-time lover of the outdoors, Scott Orlosky has made yearly backpacking trips into the Sierra for nearly 40 years. In the 1990s, he and his wife Julia were among the first volunteers of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO) hawk migration count in Marin Headlands, which started a lifelong interest in birding. An active runner, he has completed dozens of half-marathons (including 13 Pier to Peaks) and the Nine Trails Ultramarathon. He’s climbed Mount Whitney three times and scaled 16 peaks over 12,000 feet high.

Scott and his wife, Julia, and daughter, Celeste, moved to Santa Barbara 25 years ago from the Bay Area. His second daughter, Isabelle, was born shortly thereafter.  He worked in sales and marketing in the sensors industry for 30 years, and is now a marketing consultant and technical writer. He holds an MS in manufacturing engineering from UC Berkeley, a BS from the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, and two patents.

As a Monte Vista Elementary School parent volunteer, he helped develop and taught science curricula at all grade levels to help fill in the gaps left due to "No Child Left Behind."  He co-founded their annual Science Night program to bring local scientists and engineers together with students and teachers in a table-top "Science Fair" format. In 2006 he ran for and was elected to the Hope School Board for a four-year term.

Scott volunteered for the CIR for the last five years, initially for several clean-up programs, and was part of the original Foothills Forever public awareness campaign, as was his youngest daughter, “Belle”. He had an infamous stand-off with a bulldozer and was later "detained" with several others during the negotiations to buy the West Mesa portion of the San Marcos Foothill Preserve.  He’s been a volunteer docent ever since, leading tours and collecting information on the seasonal variations of visitors, plants and animal activities in the preserve.

Alex Brodie

Captain Alex Brodie is currently the managing partner of Superboat Inc., which is doing business as Island Packers in Ventura, California. He oversees all company operations including crew training and evaluation, crew and passenger safety, vessel maintenance and operation, scheduling, and financials. He led the team that designed and built three high-speed catamaran passenger vessels for the company. He recently ensured that a ten-year contract with the Department of the Interior was secured while supervising the implementation of a new online reservation system.

Alex grew up in Hawaii and lived briefly on the Monterey Peninsula before moving to Santa Barbara to attend the University of California, Santa Barbara. He lives on the Mesa with his wife of 30 years.

His boating experience includes piloting vessels of all types, from racing skiffs to tall ships, landing crafts, crew and supply boats, dozens of various passenger vessels between 42 and 90 feet, and large research vessels. Areas of operation include Southern California (over 10,000 crossings of the Santa Barbara Channel), Northern and Central California, the Hawaiian Islands, the South Pacific including New Zealand, Fiji, and French Polynesia, Baja California, Mexico, Southeast Alaska, Puget Sound, Washington, and Oregon.

Alex has started a number of small businesses and has consulted on several maritime projects. He volunteers for the Channel Islands National Park, the University of California, and The Nature Conservancy. Alex is on the steering committee of the Channel Islands Whale Heritage Area and serves on the board of The Friendship Paddle.

Geoff has a 40-year background in sales and marketing in the packaging, banking, finance, and non-profit industries. He recently retired from major gifts development at the Catalina Island Conservancy, where he led the expansion of the Leadership Circle program and solicited lead gifts for capital campaigns. He holds a B.S. Degree in Biology from the University of San Diego and a Masters in Business Administration from San Francisco State University.

Geoff’s first experience with CIR was volunteering on San Nicolas Island in the nursery and in the field. He was impressed with how CIR could provide such a rare and memorable experience to almost anyone who was fortunate to hear about it.

Growing up on the edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, Geoff has a lifelong passion for spending time outdoors hiking, camping, fishing, skiing, and surfing at local mountains, beaches, and deserts. He is a certified UC California Naturalist and actively supports several environmental organizations specializing in habitat restoration and recovery.

After a long service in corporate and healthcare environments, Geoff says he finally feels at home applying his marketing and development skills with his passion for protecting California’s natural habitats. His favorite part of raising funds for non-profit organizations has been to match the personal values of prospective and current donors with the needs of organizations he believes in.

Geoff currently lives in Santa Monica with his wife, Barbara. They have two wonderful grown kids, love to travel, and are big fans of independent cinema.

Gabrielle Coulousi

Gabrielle has dedicated 15 years to the University of California, where she has served as a project manager across a diverse range of programs. Her journey began with instructional development at UCLA, followed by multi-disciplinary research at UC San Diego, and she now focuses on housing and auxiliary-related initiatives at UCSB. This tenure has equipped her with expertise in navigating the intricate landscapes of government and education. Currently, she holds the role of Assistant Director of Strategic Projects for Housing, Dining & Auxiliary Enterprises at UCSB.

Relocating to Santa Barbara five years ago, Gabrielle sought community involvement and joined the Volunteer Botanist Project, through the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. Here, she contributed to mapping the revegetation of the Thomas Fire burn scar, exploring local trails, documenting new plant growth, and monitoring invasive species. Later, she witnessed firsthand the positive impact of Channel Islands Restoration efforts on both the mainland and the islands, by participation in a trail restoration day at Malibu Creek State Park.

Gabrielle's passion for the outdoors traces back to her Girl Scout days, an experience she treasures for fostering her love of nature. Outside of work and volunteering, she enjoys planning adventurous backpacking trips with her husband, preparing meals from their community garden harvests, sharing reading time with her bunny, Calvin, and continuing to explore the wonders of the natural world.

Helene Ansolabehere Finger

Helene Ansolabehere Finger is a California native who has been a resident of the Central Coast for close to 40 years. She is passionate about protecting this beautiful area where we are blessed to inhabit, especially the Channel Islands. Since her first volunteer trip with CIR in 2004, as part of a project to remove Eucalyptus trees on Santa Cruz Island, she has been a regular volunteer and donor.

Finger is an engineering faculty member at Cal Poly, where she began teaching water quality in 1997 and has served as Director of the Women’s Engineering Program since 2000. She resides in San Luis Obispo where she and her husband raised their two children. 

Finger is also a committed volunteer in her community, with activities ranging from founding and leading a non-profit organization, to being instrumental in securing over $40 million in grants for local safe routes to school projects in the last two years, to serving as a commissioner on the San Luis Obispo County’s Citizens Homelessness Accountability Commission.

Jeffrey Light

Jeffrey Light joined the Board of Channel Islands Restoration after meeting multiple members of the organization while enjoying all the great nature that Santa Barbara has to offer.

A practicing lawyer who works primarily in the music industry, Jeffrey studied law, mathematics, and philosophy at Columbia University, where he got his degrees “more than a few years ago.” He and his firm remain active in the music industry, and are involved with multiple charitable activities with an emphasis on health issues for musicians.  Jeffrey spent over fifteen years as a legal educator, teaching at UCLA Law School and Southwestern University, and he has lectured at Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Michigan.

An active mountain biker, climber and hiker, Jeffrey can be found most weekends (and many very early weekday mornings) spending as much time outside as possible.

Oscar Martinez

Oscar has worked in logistics and transportation for over 20 years. Currently, he is the Senior Manager of the ground network at FedEx in the south bay of San Francisco. Oscar enjoys being part of FedEx's green initiatives, which revolve around reducing the local carbon footprint. His project portfolio includes converting ground into sustainable green areas, transforming the fleet to be more carbon-friendly, and sourcing sustainable operational equipment. Oscar is also working toward a B.S. in Environmental Science from Southern New Hampshire University to pursue a more influential role in the green movement.

Oscar has loved the natural world since he was a child. He remembers exploring local canyons with friends and visiting family in northern Mexico.
In Mexico, Oscar and his relatives would hike through the countryside. His mother had an unexplainable understanding of plant life. Any garden she nurtured would flourish, and she passed along the uses of traditional medicinal plants to her children.

As an adult, Oscar's passion for conserving the natural world reignited during a backpacking trip through the mountains of West Sumatra, Indonesia. On that trip, he was reminded that he wanted to live more closely intertwined with the natural world. Since then, Oscar has hiked far and wide with his wife, three kids, and numerous friends.

The Channel Islands became a part of Oscar's life 13 years ago when he moved to Ventura County. He realized the importance of the Channel Islands during his first camping trip to Santa Cruz Island. He went on his first CIR trip seven years ago, where he learned how this local paradise could be protected and restored. Oscar is excited to join the Board so he can help educate and involve his community in the efforts to conserve these coastal gems.

Ken Owen, Executive Director

Ken Owen is the co-founder and Executive Director of Channel Islands Restoration. He directs the organization and guides the operation. Mr. Owen participates in rare plant surveys, is involved in the formulation of habitat restoration strategies and manages the day-to-day operations.

Mr. Owen has more than twenty years of experience managing large-scale ecological restoration projects in sensitive natural areas on the California coast. He has more than two decades of experience with non-profit management and is a co-founder and Executive Director of Channel Islands Restoration. He has been a restoration specialist for the University of California Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara Audubon Society.

Mr. Owen has more than 30 years of experience educating the general public on a variety of topics including ecology, plant identification and habitat restoration techniques. As an instructor for CIR, Ken has organized and led most of the organization’s educational trips. He has been an instructor for the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Ventura County Adult Education, the California Invasive Plant Council, Exploritas and the American Red Cross. He has more than 25 years of experience recruiting, training and managing staff and volunteers on a professional basis for many organizations. He possesses a Qualified Applicator’s License through the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (license number: 39503).

Alikoi Parra

Alikoi Parra is a full-time college student and works as a cultural consultant/monitor. Alikoi is also heavily involved in her Chumash culture. She started working with CIR in 2021, during the Foothills Forever campaign and enjoyed being able to learn more about the plants her ancestors used that sustained them for thousands of years while protecting her ancestors' land. Alikoi’s current project with CIR is the Native Plant Ethnobotanical Chumash Garden located on the San Marcos Foothills Preserve.

Alikoi became interested in ethnobotany as a child due to her Grandma Parra being a Chumash medicine woman in Colonia (Oxnard). Alikoi grew up eating roots straight from the ground and drinking her grandmother's herbal teas. Being a traditional singer and dancer, Alikoi firmly believes in restoring, revitalizing, and sustaining her culture which is why she helps run the Chumash Cultural Circle: hi stok’oy hil xus (Bear Circle) with the Ygnacio Family in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties which focuses on bringing back traditions that were once banned on her own homelands.

Caleb Stumberg

Caleb Stumberg moved to Santa Barbara from Montana just over 5 years ago to work at the Santa Barbara Foundation and be close to the ocean. After moving to SB, Caleb immediately fell in love with the landscape, plants, animals, and especially the environmental work in this area. CIR was recommended to Caleb by a mentor/director at SBF, Rubayi Estes. In 2020, Caleb went on his first CIR trip to the upper Santa Ynez River Valley to remove Tamarisks and he was immediately hooked. He thoroughly enjoyed learning from Doug and the two other staff members (both named Sarah) about the restoration work that the group focused on and its impact on the area. Likewise, he found the time spent with others on the trip to be wholesome and fulfilling. Caleb is very grateful for the relationships he has gained over the years through CIR and he is proud of the restoration work he has helped with. 

Currently, Caleb continues to work full-time at the Santa Barbara Foundation as the Data Administrator and on the side, he owns and operates a small woodworking business. Both of these jobs require attention to detail, a thorough understanding of many software programs and tools, the ability to communicate with various and diverse people, and strong organizational and project management know-how. He is thrilled to contribute these skills to the CIR Board of Directors.

Taylor Viens

Taylor Viens is a professional with over twenty years of nonprofit experience. From 2017-2019, he was appointed as Youth Ambassador to the United Nations for the internationally-lauded NGO Caring for Cambodia, an organization with whom he has worked since 2010. After professional positions at several nonprofits, including The New York Botanical Garden, Taylor began volunteering with the Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute (CIMWI), completing rescues and releases at Santa Cruz Island and Santa Rosa Island and in the channel and assists regularly at the marine mammal hospital facility in Gaviota with rehabilitation and caring for pinnipeds. He has also worked with the California Institute of Environmental Sciences planting native species and removing invasives on Santa Cruz Island and Anacapa since 2023. Taylor has a career in data science and volunteers when he's not in the ocean. 

Advisory Council

David H. Anderson

David H. Anderson retired in 2010 after a 40-year career as an attorney specializing in environmental law, with a volunteer focus on land conservation law.  He co-founded the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County in 1983, where he served as board chair and also served as pro bono legal counsel for many years during which he negotiated the acquisition of the Carpinteria Bluffs, Sedgwick Ranch and Rancho Arroyo Hondo.  He is a past board chair of the Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara Foundation, national Land Trust Alliance and also the Wood River Land Trust in Idaho, as well as serving as chair of the Santa Barbara Planning Commission.  He was a trustee of the California Nature Conservancy for many years and worked on the transition of Santa Cruz Island after the death of Carey Stanton.  He was also an early board member of the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper and Housing Trust for Santa Barbara County, and he continues as a former board member and advisor to the Lobero Theatre Foundation.  Since retirement, Dave and his wife Lyn have made their base in Ketchum, Idaho where they had skied for many years.  They spend time also in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where their daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren live.  Dave and Lyn continue to maintain a part-time residence in Santa Barbara where he has worked with Channel Islands Restoration for almost 13 years to obtain permits and funding to restore the archaeological site known as Hammonds Meadow in partnership with the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.

Russ Charvonia

Russ has worked in the financial services industry since 1980. He is a Senior Wealth Advisor and Managing Director for Mariner Wealth advisors, providing financial and wealth management advice to individual and business clients. He holds several professional designations, earning his Juris doctor degree from Ventura College of Law in 2003. He was admitted to the California Bar in 2004. He is the founder of Channel Islands Law Group in Ventura, which specializes in estate and charitable gift planning. Russ also has a mediation practice, where he helps parties identify and craft creative solutions to difficult problems.

Russ volunteers his professional services to several non-profit organizations in his community, including having served as president of the Alisa Ann Ruch Burn Foundation board. He is founding president of the Worldwide Civility Council, and heads the Masonic Family Civility Project. He also previously served as a director on the board of The Midnight Mission for two years. He is active in Temple Beth Torah in Ventura, having served as its president. He volunteers for Channel Islands Restoration, helping to restore the Channel Islands to their native condition. He previously served as treasurer for the Conflict Resolution Institute of Ventura County. Russ is also on the Advisory Council of the Ventura Land Trust.

He served as Grand Master of Masons of California in 2014/15, serving more than 50,000 members. Along with co-author Michael Ashley, he has written The Civility Mosaic: How Anyone Can Use the Principles of Freemasonry to Repair Our World. Russ lives in Ventura with his wife, Linda. He has a daughter, Alissa; son and daughter-in-law, Keith and Kendall; and grandsons, Tanner and Hudson.

Wayne R. Ferren Jr

Wayne has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geology and a Masters in Biology from Rutgers University. He worked as a botanist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) for 26 years (1978-2004), serving in various capacities, including the Executive Director of the Museum of Systematics and Ecology, Director of Carpinteria Salt Marsh Reserve, and Assistant Director of the UCSB Natural Reserve System. During this time, he founded a pioneering program in restoration ecology now part of the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration at UCSB. Wayne also served as President of the California Botanical Society and editor of Madroño¾A West American Journal of Botany. Wayne is the author of numerous scientific articles on plants, ecology, wetlands, and ecological restoration and is the recipient of twelve environmental awards and acknowledgments. He also is the author of Conscientious Objector. A Journey of Peace, Justice, Culture, and Environment (Archway Publishing 2021), a memoir and cultural commentary on the years leading up to his experience as a conscientious objector performing alternative civilian service during the Vietnam War (1971-1973). In this capacity, he worked in the Botany Department of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and conducted research on freshwater tidal wetlands. For the past 20 years, Wayne has been an environmental consultant in New Jersey, Nevada, and California. He now resides in Oxnard.

Greg Giloth

Greg was born in Glen Ellyn, Ill on March 6, 1947 and attended local schools until his junior year of high school.  In 1963 he moved with his family to Summit, NJ and graduated from Summit High School in 1965.

Greg has worked in computers and high tech for most of his career.  In 1972 he graduated from Northern Illinois University with a BS in Marketing and an MBA.  In 1974 he made his way to the SF Bay Area where he started his career in sales and worked for Burroughs Corporation for 7 years before taking over the Large Account Branch in Santa Barbara.  In 1983 he left Burroughs and started with a string of software tech startups that lasted until 2013.  His last position was with Wind River Systems, a division of Intel Corporation where he was a Regional Account Manager in the Aerospace and Defense Industry.  He was responsible for the software needs of accounts such as Boeing, Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, and JPL in Southern CA.  He actively worked with JPL to put the Rovers on Mars and Wind River software runs on every Mars Rover on the planet’s surface today.

Greg and his spouse Ellen Easton have a ranch south of Cuyama in northern SB County against the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountain range.  They enjoy back country hikes, backpacking and sharing the wilderness with their grandchildren.

Dennis Houghton

Dennis Houghton has over 35 years of management experience in the pharmaceutical, biotech, and biomedical software industries. Dennis started his career in Santa Barbara with over 15 years at pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co., where he served in many positions including as the National Director of Managed Care Programs. Following Searle, Dennis held positions at Synergen, Systems Consulting Company, MedImmune, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, and Durata Therapeutics, where he was responsible for developing national account strategy and business relationships with the nation’s top health systems. In 2015, Dennis joined Alpha Logic, leading its human healthcare - GI Logic Hospital Business. Dennis received a bachelor’s degree in Geography from California State University, Northridge and resides in Santa Barbara, California. The physical world has always been a passion for Dennis, and his work as a Board Member with Channel Islands Restoration melds his cultural, economic, and physical geography interests with a career in the human biomedical arena. Dennis was appointed to a four-year term (2019-2022) as an Airport Commissioner at Santa Barbara Airport.

Karl Hutterer

Karl Hutterer grew up on a small subsistence farm in the Austrian Alps. He looks back on an academic career as an archaeologist at the University of Michigan and the University of Washington. He conducted research in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, focusing chiefly on long-term human interactions with tropical ecosystems. He moved to Santa Barbara in 2000 to become Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Since retiring from this position in early 2013 he has been devoting most of his time and energies to working with the Community Environmental Council and other nonprofits on educating the public about climate change and finding and promoting solutions to mitigate this existential threat and build resilience to impacts we no longer can avoid.

Julie Kummel

20-year volunteer and supporter of CIR. Retired nurse and teacher.
Interests. Habitat restoration, outdoor recreation, outdoor education.

Hank Mitchel

Hank is a multi-generation Californian and a lifelong outdoorsman.  He has hiked, camped, and explored throughout California, including on all eight of our California Channel Islands.  Efforts to preserve and share our natural environment have always been of primary interest.  He currently serves as a Trustee of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.  Previously he was a docent at the Museum and the Channel Islands Naturalist Corps.  In addition, he has been a trustee of the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum and Santa Barbara Channel Keeper. He has supported and regularly donated to Channel Islands Restoration for over 10 years. Hank and his wife Mari are and have been active in various philanthropic efforts throughout Santa Barbara for many years.  They live in Hope Ranch.

Marianne Para

Marianne Parra is Chumash with lineage to Santa Ynez, Goleta, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz and Ventura. Marianne spent many years from early childhood to late teens on the Santa Ynez Reservation with family, learning and practicing culture and being connected with elders. Family and building connections within her communities have always been very important. She has a lengthy background in the medical field and doing volunteer work with domestic violence survivors. Her education in forensic psychology is on hold while she explores Chumash ethnobotany and other areas. Marianne is the granddaughter of a Chumash healer/medicine woman who first shared stories with her regarding pygmy woolly mammoths in the area long before any had been discovered.

Phil White

CIR Board member Phil White lives in Ojai with his wife Suzanne.  Their home is only blocks from the trails in the National Forest and they take advantage of hiking on a regular basis.  

Phil is an engineer and also has a passion for flora and fauna.  In addition to serving on the CIR Board, Phil is on the Board of Directors for the Ventura Botanical Gardens.  He is associated with the Ojai Valley Museum and is currently curating an exhibit scheduled to open later in 2021 entitled "Flora and Fauna in the Time of Climate Change" that will include his collection of Ojai-area insects.  He is very committed to addressing climate change and serves on climate emergency committees in the City of Ojai and the County of Ventura. 

Besides helping with CIR restoration projects at Point Mugu, the old Camarillo nursery, and on San Nicolas Island, he designed and installed a native plant restoration project at a gypsum mine in Quatal Canyon in Ventura County, and initiated a cerrado forest restoration project at a former cattle ranch in the Brazilian state of Goias. 

Phil says:  "I am very excited to be a part of CIR.  The mission to revegetate the islands and mainland with native plants really resonates with me.  The passion CIR's Board, staff and volunteers have to carry out this mission is just so inspirational."